Papua New Guinea’s most famous war relic, the Second World War B-17 Flying Fortress, dubbed the Swamp Ghost, is now at the Lae port ready to be shipped to the United States.

The newspaper, the National, reports the aircraft has been taken out of the Voco Point timber yard of PNG Forest Products, where it had been sitting for the past three years, and loaded onto three semi-trailers.The aircraft was last week dismantled and packed when exporter Fred Hagen, an American businessman, arrived in Lae.The National understands that clearance for the export was given on September the 10th by the National Executive Council against the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee, which in 2006 had found that the salvage from the Agiambo Swamp in Oro province was illegal.

Agiambo landowner chief Alan Jojoga last week said he, at the behest of Tourism Minister Charles Abel, had accepted the offer of 100,000 US dollars to be deposited into a trust account.